


Home

by sh_wright890



Series: JEM Week 2015 [5]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Family Christmas, JEM Week, Jean's aunt is very supporting, Multi, and wise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:28:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8915434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sh_wright890/pseuds/sh_wright890
Summary: A house isn't always a home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one I tweaked a bit since I noticed a few errors in my rush to get them all done on time. I'd been stupid and decided to do all of them on the day of the prompt instead of working ahead. So yes, Jean didn't suddenly lose his two aforementioned siblings.

Home. It’s where the heart is or some weird shit like that. My home was an hour away from where I lived with Eren and Marco, and I was invited over for Christmas Eve. 

Our family was notorious for Christmases. Since I was little, it was tradition to have the whole family over, and when I say the whole family, I mean  _ the whole family. _ My mom had three brothers and a sister, and my father had two sisters and two brothers, and they all had several children. Add that to my other two younger siblings, and the holidays were a huge event. Usually, a large chunk of the family couldn’t make it because of other plans, but what’s a large chunk when you literally have over twenty cousins.

And that was why I was sitting on the living room floor, wedged between my sister and one of my cousins, wishing for this to be over. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family, but I couldn’t stand to be around them for longer than an hour, and it had been a whole day already. Dinner had been eaten, and presents were being unwrapped as all the father figures were desperately trying to shove the wrapping paper into garbage sacks fast enough.

I’d gotten various gift cards to restaurants and stores where I lived, socks, a lot of twenty dollar bills that I haven’t counted yet, and a watch. My younger--oh, yeah, I was the eldest out of all of us--cousins had gotten anything from Hot Wheels to puzzles to clothes.

I stared at the tree. It was mostly decorated with red bulbs, and there were hardly any lights on it. It made me miss the tree at home.

Home. No, this was my home.

Somebody tapped on my shoulder, and I turned around to see my aunt Grace. I smiled a little. “Hi.”

“Hey,” she replied, smiling warmly. “You wanna go take a walk, get some fresh air?”

I didn’t hesitate to get up and follow her outside. She was Mom’s twin sister, and we’d always been close. She was always really calm and collected, even when her own kids were throwing hissy fits, and I knew for a fact that she was an accepting person. She was the only one in my family that knew I was dating two guys.

Our breaths puffed in the air in little white clouds. “How are they?” she asked finally.

“They’re good. Marco is going home tomorrow in the morning, and Eren…” I sighed. “Eren can’t go home.”

She nodded slowly. “I see.” We headed towards her car. “Well, tell him that I wish him a Merry Christmas. Both of them.”

“I will, thank you.”

She clicked the button to unlock her car. “Has Eren’s temper cooled off any since I saw him?”

I rubbed the back of my neck sheepishly. “Not really.” She’d only met them once. Marco, Eren, and I had taken a weekend trip to the town she lived in and visited random shops and popular haunts. That would’ve been fine, but one of the nights, we went drinking, and Eren and I got into a… more than playful fistfight in the road. Marco was trying to break it up when she’d heard the commotion and came running. It took both her and Marco to get us off each other, and she helped clean us up. 

Out of all the ways I wanted a family member to meet my boyfriends, a drunken fistfight scenario surprisingly wasn’t at the top of my list.

She chuckled. “Good. Such a strong spirit, that one.”

“Tell me about it.”

She opened her car door and leaned in, pulling out three boxes. Handing them to me, she said, “Here. One is for you, and there’s one for either of the boys.”

I looked at them. “Thank you. You didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to.” She crossed her arms. “Now what’s bothering you?” I tilted my head and tucked the boxes under my arm. “Don’t play dumb with me. I have four children, remember?”

I leaned back against her car next to her and sighed, rubbing my face with my free hand. “They told me they loved me.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Really? That’s fantastic, Jean. But what’s the matter? Aren’t you happy?”

“I am, I am. Trust me, I am. But I don’t know what to say back.” 

“Do you love them too?”

“Yeah, I do. A shit ton, but I don’t wanna mess this up. And I don’t know if we’ll end up together forever, you know?”

“You’re upset is because you don’t know how to say that you reciprocate their love too in a perfect way?”

“Um. Yes.” I absently popped my fingers.

“That and you are afraid to tell them because you aren’t sure if you all will still love each other, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 years down the road?” She quirked an eyebrow.

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“Jean,” she said gently, touching my upper arm, “there never is a guarantee that you’re going to be with the same person in a year--even a month--let alone two people. Try not to think of it as a blind leap of faith. Think of it like this: would you rather let yourself love them and have these memories to hold onto even if you aren’t with them when you’re older, or would you rather prevent yourself from giving them your love out of fear and risk losing them sooner?”

I nodded slowly. “Okay, I get what you’re saying.” And I did. I would definitely rather hold onto them as tight as I was able for as long as possible instead of letting them slide through my fingertips. I already knew that those three words weren’t all they wanted, all they needed, but it was something, a verbal confession of sorts.

She smiled. “When are you going home?”

Home. It’s where the heart is. My heart wasn’t here anymore--it was in a pair of green eyes and freckled-covered skin.

“Now.” I kissed her head. “Thank you.” I dug my keys out of my pocket and headed towards my car. I was extremely thankful I’d insisted on not being pinned in.

“I’ll let them know you left.”

I looked at her gratefully from over the tops of other cars. “Okay. Thank you. And have a Merry Christmas.”

She smiled warmly. “You too, Jean.”


End file.
